A Russian government official has threatened to restrict Russia's essential food exports to only "friendly" countries.
by Louis Seagray, The Liberty Loft, April 3, 2022
Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and senior Russian security official, has threatened to cut off food shipments to the West in the near future.
Russia, a key player in the world market for wheat and other agri-food products, will instead focus on keeping itself fed, as well as supplying its friends and close allies, according to Medvedev.
Medvedev wrote on Telegram that cutting off North America and the European Union from agricultural products would be an excellent method to retaliate against sanctions.
“It so happened that the food security of many countries depends on our supplies,” the Russian official wrote. “It turns out that our food is our quiet weapon. Quiet but ominous.”
“The priority in food supplies is our domestic market. And price control,” he continued. “We will supply food and crops only to our friends (fortunately, we have a lot of them, and they are not at all in Europe and not in North America). We will sell both for rubles and for their national currency in agreed proportions.”
“We will not supply our products and agricultural products to our enemies,” he went on to say. “And we won’t buy anything from them (although we haven’t bought anything since 2014, but the list of products prohibited for import can be further expanded).”
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Medvedev’s threat is similar to others made by the Russian government, such as the threat that allegedly “unfriendly” countries will soon be forced to pay in rubles only for a variety of Russian resources, including the country’s highly sought after gas exports, or face being cut off completely from supply.
The remarks of the ex-President came just a day after the Russian government imposed export restrictions on sunflower oil and outright banned the export of sunflower seeds and rapeseed, according to POLITICO.
Foreign countries had been feeling the strain in terms of sunflower oil supplies even before the ban was imposed., with panic buying shortages affecting traditional foods are being observed in Germany and chip shops in Belgium.
Some officials, however, appear to believe that these minor inconveniences will be insignificant in comparison to the severe crises that will emerge from a shortage of agri-food exports from Russia and Ukraine.
“For me, it’s not whether we are moving into a global food crisis – it’s how large the crisis will be,” said one expert, Svein Tore Holsether, the CEO of Yara International, a fertilizer firm.
“Half the world’s population gets food as a result of fertilizers… and if that’s removed from the field for some crops, [the yield] will drop by 50 per cent,” he explained.
Another UN expert has warned that if Europe does not respond quickly, it would soon face “Hell on Earth” migratory surges, with a food scarcity in the Global South as a result of the ongoing Ukraine situation likely to spark a new migrant catastrophe.
“If you think we’ve got Hell on earth now, you just get ready,” said the UN’s David Beasley, who formerly served as Governor of South Carolina for the Republican Party.
“If we neglect northern Africa, northern Africa’s coming to Europe. If we neglect the Middle East, [the] Middle East is coming to Europe,” he warned.
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